Top 3 Comic Books - Week of February 13th, 2013

This week was a tad bittersweet in terms of comics for me. The fantastic end of a great arc in Batman, and several excellent “X-books” made my reading delightful, but unfortunately there was also the impending end of an era hanging over my head. The month of May will see the end of Geoff Johns’ nearly nine year run on Green Lantern, one of, if not my favorite comic book tenures of all time. I know it was inevitable, I mean, nothing lasts forever… but I’m still sad that it has to end. I can change, baby! Give me one more chance!

THREE - Wolverine And The X-Men #25

With a new arc seeing the major characters heading to the Savage Land for a field trip, it was great to see Jason Aaron - and Wolverine and the X-Men as a book - really hammer home that the main characters are the students. Other than Wolverine and a quick scene with Beast, almost no adults are seen through the entire issue and I’m okay with that.

The most prominent of the students so far in this story is Quentin Quire who brought the old snark and sarcasm along with the new: his attempt at being a leader. A while back Xavier endorsed Quire as a candidate for president of the school’s student council against Quire’s wishes and now we’re seeing him try and live up to this position slightly, even if he is being forced into it. I like Quire and I’ve enjoyed seeing him grow a bit over the course of his time at the school and this issue is full of content from him.

Wolverine and the X-Men has had some truly great artists work on it over it’s 25 issues so far, including Chris Bachalo (more on him later) and Nick Bradshaw, and with issue #25 I now hope to add Ramón Perez to this list as he makes a great first impression, the highest point being everyone's stunned disinterest after Quentin tries to gives orders and be a leader. With the staggering amount of large splash-panels that he had to do, I’m confident in his ability to draw beautiful vistas and chaotic fight scenes as well as the smaller things. This has been one of the most consistently enjoyable and specifically fun books Marvel has been putting out of late and the colourful, crazy action transitions perfectly into a new story-arc which also serves as a particularly great place to jump on board (then go get the previous issues too!)

TWO - Batman #17

With issue #17 of Scott Snyder’s Batman we get the conclusion of the “Death of the Family” story-arc that (unsurprisingly) delivers on almost everything we could have wanted while also subverting our expectations. The Joker was mostly his usual wild and chaotic self that Batman had dealt with so many times before at a glance, but looking through the previous issues of this story – in addition to this one – the real scary aspect of Joker’s plan is that in reality he was being methodical. The Joker could even be described as thoughtful now that all is said and done.

By the end of this issue Snyder truly has brought about the “death” of this group and honestly shaken up the status quo of the “family” in question. Although not a bloodbath, there is more of a metaphorical, emotional death due to the Joker’s machinations. Despite it’s title, this story has always been more about the relationship between the Joker and Batman then it has been about the bat-family, with those moments being examined in more detail in their own respective solo books. The Joker considers himself the only family that Batman truly has (or needs) and sets out to prove this to be the case and bring them closer together. As I attempt to avoid spoilers as best I can and still get my point across suffice to say the Joker may have a point regarding Batman’s own need for the Joker matching Joker’s need for Batman.

While it’s frustrating to try and explain why the book is so well written without spoiling it, I can at least detail why the book looks so damn good without ruining much. With the entirety of the series up to this point featuring Joker in a garage uniform instead of his traditional purple coat (except seen in flashback briefly) this final installment saw him return to his more traditional look for his dinner with his beloved. Greg Capullo keeps up the strong work the series has been known for up to this point and the Joker looks just as menacing and in love as he had in previous issues (although I will say the flashback scene from issue #15 is still the single best image he’s drawn to date). Even held up with straps and hooks the Joker’s grin is haunting and the way that Jokers face slides around when hit hard by Batman is perfectly grotesque. And no discussion about the artwork in this issue could be complete without the wordless final page, which I again can’t go into detail without spoiling the issue slightly, but believe me when I say that the idea and the art were so strong nothing needed to be said.

The conclusion to “Death of the Family” is the best reason available to explain why Snyder and Capullo’s Batman is the strongest book going at DC right now, and why it looks to continue this trend for a long time to come.

ONE - Uncanny X-Men #1

And coming in at number one this week – as well as being the second piece of “X-bread” in this sandwich – is Brian Michael Bendis’ other X-Men book, Uncanny X-Men. Although this is a new number one after the series was on a hiatus of about four months, this issue at times feels like issue #8 with the first seven issues of All New X-Men (also written by Bendis) having set this issue up in it’s own short run so far. However, where All New X-Men has been about the time displaced original X-Men and other sister series Wolverine and the X-Men has been about Wolverine and the students of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, Uncanny X-Men is about those aligned with Scott Summers a.k.a Cyclops a.k.a the most wanted mutant (potentially most wanted person) on the planet.

Let me get one spoiler out of the way so you can read this book with as little stress as possible (if you haven’t already): the man talking through the issue’s frame narrative is NOT Charles Xavier returned to life. When this man is first seen I was worried the whole time that Xavier’s death was going to be nullified only three months later, something I very strongly do not want. Hopefully knowing that up front will allow for a better read, similar to the one I enjoyed reading it a second time.

With that out of the way, the reveal of who that man IS should hopefully come as a surprise and lead to some interesting directions that the book can go. And while the frame narrative is excellently handled, the true meat of this issue comes in form of the new-look team trying to recruit another new mutant to their cause. While his methods are just as questionable as the circumstances that lead him to this point, one has to admit that Cyclops comes across considerably better when put against the frightened, bigoted police trying to arrest this new mutant Fabio Medina. This is a conflict and an issue that I hope to be a recurring one as Scott has become one of the most polarizing figures amongst the public of the Marvel universe. Whether or not you think “Cyclops was right” (and seriously, there had better be a T-shirt of that I can buy within the next couple of weeks) this cause he has devoted himself to has become one of the most interesting topics in comics now, and has made the X-Men world THE place to be in the Marvel universe right now. If you read one “family” of books, it should be this one.

As I mentioned earlier Chris Bachalo used to be a regular artist for Wolverine and the X-Men but has been absent as of the last several months. Now he’s found his way back to the X-Men and is making this book look just as sharp as he did with Wolverine and the X-Men. With his expressive, almost beautiful looking eyes Bachalo makes every visual pop, and that’s just to name one feature in particular about his work that is impressive. The action scenes against the sentinels are also splendid with the each panel looking properly frantic, hectic and most importantly dangerous.

While each book can be read on their own, you get the fullest, most robust experience by reading them all. Now that this series has finally started and thrown itself into the mix, I can safely say that it was worth the wait and should prove to be an interesting ride from here on out.